Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 432</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OW-2021-0736; FRL-8885-03-OW]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2040-AG22</RIN> <SUBJECT>Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final action. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA or Agency) is withdrawing the proposed rule entitled “Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category,” which published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on January 23, 2024. After considering public comments on the proposed rule, the EPA has decided not to finalize revised technology-based effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) or pretreatment standards for the Meat and Poultry Products (MPP) industry, based on exercise of its statutory discretion and judgment that such revisions would not be appropriate. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> As of September 3, 2025, the proposed rule published on January 23, 2024, at 89 FR 4474, is withdrawn. In accordance with 40 CFR part 23, this final action shall be considered issued for the purposes of judicial review at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on September 3, 2025. Under section 509(b)(1) of the Clean Water Act (CWA), judicial review of the Administrator's final action regarding effluent limitations guidelines and pretreatment standards can only be done by filing a petition for review in the United States Court of Appeals within 120 days after the decision is considered issued for purposes of judicial review. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2021-0736. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> confidential business information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steve Whitlock, Engineering and Analysis Division, Office of Water (4303T), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: 202-566-1541; email address: <E T="03">Whitlock.Steve@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">What other information is available to support this final action?</HD> The action is supported by several documents, including: • Development Document for Final Action on the Meat & Poultry Products Point Source Category Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards (Development Document), Document No. 821-R-25-001. This report summarizes the technical, engineering, and economic analyses that EPA considered in taking the final action, including cost of regulatory options, adverse non-water quality environmental impacts, effluent reductions and associated benefits, and calculation of the effluent limitations considered. • Docket Index for Final Action for the Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category. This document provides a list of the additional memoranda, references, and other information the EPA considered in taking final action on the MPP ELGs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> On January 23, 2024, the EPA proposed to revise the existing technology-based effluent limitations guidelines and standards for the meat and poultry products point source category. The Agency solicited comment on possible revisions and additions to the ELGs for existing and new sources in this category. The EPA took comment on a range of options in the proposed rule. The options included more stringent effluent limitations on total nitrogen, new effluent limitations on total phosphorus, updated effluent limitations for other pollutants, new pretreatment standards for indirect dischargers, and revised production thresholds for some of the subcategories in the existing rule. Additionally, the EPA also considered effluent limitations on chlorides, establishing effluent limitations for <E T="03">E. coli</E> for direct dischargers, and including conditional limits for indirect dischargers that discharge to POTWs operating nutrient treatment technologies to remove nutrients. Inherent in the Agency's proposal was the additional option of withdrawing the proposed rule (the no-rule option). The Agency considered the same options in this final action, with updates informed by public input. Informed by concerns expressed in public comments received on the proposed rule, the EPA has decided not to finalize revised ELGs or pretreatment standards for the MPP industry. Accordingly, the EPA is withdrawing the proposed rule based on its statutory discretion to determine whether such revision is “appropriate,” (CWA section 304(b)) and factors for establishing such requirements, including “such other factors as the Administrator deems appropriate.” (CWA section 304(b)(1)(B); 304(b)(2)(B), 304(b)(4)(B)). In the EPA's judgment, it is not appropriate to impose additional regulation on the MPP industry, given Administration priorities and policy concerns, including protecting food supply and mitigating inflationary prices for American consumers following a protracted period of high inflation from 2020 through 2024. The MPP industry is critical to the nation's food supply, and there is a shift in national policy toward ensuring reduction of the cost of living and reinvigorating American industry. In addition, past and ongoing external stressors on this industry require sustained attention, including COVID-19 food supply and supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, highly pathogenic avian flu (HPAI), and the New World Screwworm (NWS). For all of these reasons, the EPA is exercising its statutory discretion to choose how to marshal and prioritize its resources and is not proceeding with revisions to the MPP ELGs or establishing pretreatment standards for this industry, as explained in section VI of this document. In addition, the agency's analysis of regulatory options considered shows that they would negatively impact the environment and public health in the form of increased air pollution and solid waste. This final action avoids these negative impacts because the EPA has chosen the no-rule option. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Participation</HD> During the 60-day public comment period on the proposed rule (89 FR 4474, January 23, 2024) (from January 23, 2024, to March 25, 2024), the EPA received more than 5,000 public comment submissions from private citizens, industry representatives, technology vendors, government entities, environmental groups, and trade associations. The EPA also hosted three public hearings during the public comment period—an online hearing January 24, 2024, an in-person hearing January 31, 2024, and another online hearing March 20, 2024. These hearings had a combined total of 362 attendees, 46 of whom registered to provide comment on the proposed rule. Available documents and recordings from each public hearing include transcripts of the presentations and a list of attendees (document control number (DCN) MP01489, DCN MP01489A1, MP01489A2, DCN MP02001, DCN MP02001A1, DCN MP02001A2, DCN MP02002, and DCN MP02002A1, DCN MP02002A1). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> Over more than 50 years, EPA, states, and local partners have worked collaboratively to implement the CWA and there have been significant reductions in pollution entering our nation's waterways. Under one component of CWA implementation, the EPA is to issue effluent limitations guidelines, pretreatment standards and new source performance standards for industrial dischargers. Before the passage of the Clean Water Act, the nation's surface waters were significantly polluted. The Cuyahoga River became the symbol of polluted waters when it caught fire at least a dozen times prior to the Clean Water Act's passage in 1972. Under the Act, pollution discharges have been significantly reduced and our nation's waterbodies have recovered. Waters that were once contaminated are clean and safe for wildlife and recreation. A key component of this recovery has been reductions in point-source discharges of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, under the Act. While additional reductions in nitrogen and phosphorous loads to certain waters may further improve water quality, the Agency and its partners have generally shifted focus to non-point sources of these pollutants. The most significant sources of nitrogen and phosphorus loads to our nations waters today are non-point sources. In taking this final action, the EPA considered revisions of the ELGs and promulgation of pretreatment standards for the MPP industry based on Best Practicable Control Technology Currently Available (BPT), Best Conventional Pollutant Control Technology (BCT), Best Available Technology Economically Achievable (BAT), Best Available Demonstrated Control Technology (BADCT) for New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), Pretreatment Standards for Existing Sources (PSES), and Pretreatment Standards for New Sources (PSNS). These types of effluent guidelines and standards are summarized in the preamble for the proposed regulation (89 FR 4474, January 23, 2024). As part of the EPA ELG review process, the EPA conducted a cross-industry review of publicly available dischar ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 43k characters. 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